CDS as Participatory Approach in Future Visioning of City Development Process: Case Study of Mahabad

Since the beginning of modern times in Qajar era and its further expansion in Pahlavi era, urban management in Iran has failed expectations on satisfactory performance in many areas including especially local and participatory management, hence failing to meet citizens’ diverse needs due to the flawed mutual relations between people and the city management, and creating severe challenges to contemporary city planning. City Development Strategy (CDS), with its most prominent feature of – according to Cities Alliance guidelines – participatory future visioning and social capacity-building of sustainable city development, is a modern approach in city planning, poverty reduction, improvement of quality of life, and promoting public participation in city management. The present paper examines this approach in Mahabad, West Azerbaijan province, with the objective being preparing grounds for participation in future visioning of city development – which provides a justified framework of future planning. An applied descriptive-analytical research will us survey as the method of collecting data. The findings of the study, according to three major categories of theories on city planning, indicate that citizens in Mahabad have an appropriate level of common knowledge of opportunities, threats, and capabilities of their city issues, which makes conditions conducive for future visioning of the city planning.